I don't have an ipod, but I used to know how to get Windows Media Player to shuffle play every song on my hard drive. The software has been "updated" though, and now I can't figure out what to do. I'd really like to play, though.

Utah Phillips, Rosalie Sorrels, Phil Ochs,Woody Guthrie,Hazel Dickens....ooops. Shot down like a dog in a basement bathroom by Wall Streeter John Corbett. And he looked so nice, despite the double stripes.

I don't have a shuffle, but I'm completely clean. I don't have mcuh obscure stuff. If you listen to the lyrics and think a little, Sly Stone is really out there, but he's a boomer classic. Same for Peter Tosh. "Downpressor Man" is pretty harsh, but after a certain number of frat parties it's harmless. Avant-garde jazz tends to be Afrocentric and left, but there are few lyrics except in Mingus. Again, boomers.

Hmm. The 6th song was "Against the Grain," by Bad Religion, which is a perfectly harmless song, but I suppose the band name would be enough.
I was really hoping for "Entering Jesus from the Rear" by Feederz.

Nothing too damning lyrics-wise, but I guess I'm out on the snotty-classical-listening front and the french-lyrics front. First shuffle was Bartok's 5th string quartet, sixth was Né dans la rue by Zebda.

35: Do you actually mean you have Dog Faced Hermans on your iPod? Did you do some fancy thing with the vinyl? How? How? Or was that album for some reason available on CD? I live in fear that my treasured DFH records will somehow be injured or destroyed, leaving me DFH-less.

I have no iPod, but I was preparing a mix for a benefit last night and I'm pretty sure that Kid Creole and the Coconuts' "Annie I'm Not Your Daddy" would disqualify me. ("If I was in your blood, child you wouldn't be so ugly") I ended up not including that one because it's mean-spirited and despite being by an Actual Artist of Color plays with race in a manner that I think might be best reserved for gatherings of people I know fairly well. (But it's so danceable!)

I can't imagine that "Coup" (23 Skiddoo); "Get Behind the Struggle" (Radio 4; I think that's the title); "To Hell With Poverty" (Gang of Four); or even the original version of "99 Red Balloons" would help either. Or, for that matter, "Police Truck" and "Let's Lynch the Landlord" (which always makes me feel guilty since my actual landlords are rather good).

On the other hand, "We Live As We Dream, Alone" (GoF) might win me the conservative vote..."Man and woman need to work, it helps us define ourselves". I'm hoping that my green anarchist friends will be shocked and displeased when they hear it.

Do you actually mean you have Dog Faced Hermans on your iPod? Did you do some fancy thing with the vinyl? How? How? Or was that album for some reason available on CD? I live in fear that my treasured DFH records will somehow be injured or destroyed, leaving me DFH-less.

I have in the past ripped songs from vinyl (my treasured copy of Baltimore band Pinky's "Coconut Creme" single, the best indiepop song ever about donuts), but Those Deep Buds was released on CD by Alt Tent. (TDB and Bump and Swing are available on eMusic, in fact.)

I'm sure high-quality rips off the vinyl were floating around Oink and are now available on waffles or whatever the kids are using.

50: True! Good point. (My favoritest thing in the 2004 election was when a reporter told Teresa Heinz that some Republican jerk said her husband "looks French." TH scoffed and replied, "Hmph. I bet he doesn't even speak French." Oh, Teresa, I was so with you.)

Is no one going to freak out with me over this gun ruling?! Doom! Apocalypse! Bad stuff!

For shame, Kraaby. This is only the first step to ending anti-gun tyranny and preserving Our American Folkways. What about the authoritarian DC laws preventing Matt Yglesias from defending his home with tactical nuclear weapons?

Completely expecting my partyshuffle to expose my utter lameness, imagine my surprise when the 3d and 8th songs turned out to be from Chumbawamba's album Never Mind the Ballots--an album iTunes had dutifully avoided for years.

Hmm. First set of 6: "Fame", David Bowie; "Do Not Stand at My Grave", Libera; the second movement of Appalachian Spring, Aaron Copland; "Waiting for a Girl Like You", Foreigner (one of the GTA3 soundtrack albums, providing most of my '80s pop needs in one album); "電車", Serial Experiments Lain soundtrack; "Once", Blackfield. Australian progressive rock doesn't seem likely to provide an in-essentio ground for dismissal, and the anime album was a legit import.

Geez, I had to go through about four sets until I got "Crumbs From Your Table" by U2, which would get the Religious Reich all worked up. Ah, now the Seraphim Shock tracks show up. Those'd do it, too.

66: How about that one about the Sandinistas, the most boring song in the entire universe: "Now the people are learning to take back their lives/As the country will change [sic] Sandinista survives". You can tell that the Chumbas are anarchists from the lugubrious, dutiful way they sing that one. (I mean of course there's the whole irony/US-destroying-one-of-the-very-few-viable-socialist-governments-shortly-thereafter factor too). I really love both Never Mind the Ballots and Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records (one of my first vinyl purchases, double record from One Little Indian before OLI was bought by NMI.)

I wonder what in my music collection would actually disqualify me for running for public office. Isn't there a God Is My Copilot song about gay sex with a priest? That'd be a good start, at least if I were running as a Democrat.

Alternately, maybe some Skrewdriver, though I don't have any from their extended period as the house band for the National Front.

Damn. 50 songs in and nothing disqualifying, unless I underestimate how much the American people would be offended by that Pixies track with the "You fuckin' die!" bit or the how much they hate vaguely intellectual yet more-or-less incomprehensible lyrics. My iPod seems to love the Beatles today.

At #21 I get "Flint (for the Unemployed and Underpaid)" by Sufjan Stevens; how do Michiganders feel about that? Not disqualifying, but would it cost me votes?

58: Because it further limits the state's power to regulate gun ownership and behavior. For instance, the Court said that not only can't D.C. ban handguns, it can't require trigger locks. Let's see what the accidental gun death rate looks like in 3 years.

It's either #4 (Dresden Dolls' "My Alcoholic Friends") or #12 (Frank Black covering "Sugar Daddy" from Hedwig and the Angry Inch). The Kylie would probably disqualify me on grounds of buggery but honestly it's just so innocuous; we queens love it because it's like a second helping of bubblegum pop for middle age.

Probably the single most disqualifying things in my music collection would be Fantastic Damage by El-P. Nihilistic, abrasive, crass, anti-family, and rap (by a hispanic dude, so still a minority!).

But that's an interesting question. Would the explicit ultra-left-wing politics of The Coup make them more incriminating despite their more conventional music backing and lack of misogyny? What about the Rapeman album? Is angry, brutally and deliberately offensive noise rock by a bunch of suburban white guys "worse" than less blatently disturbing but more political music by black people?

These are the issues of our times, people. These are the questions that stir men's souls.

91: Doesn't "accidental gun death rate" imply that most of the people being killed would be gun owners or those close to them? It's not clear to me that this is a big problem: either the rate stabilizes or gun owners accident themselves out of existence.

The Coup could be genuinely disqualifying: ultra-left-wing hip-hop, generally unknown to the general public, and thus not bleached of their power to alarm. And if anyone in the general public has heard of them, it would be for the fact that they had to delay releasing their 2001 album because the cover was going to feature a picture of the World Trade Center exploding.

The ruling does not mean, for instance, that laws against carrying concealed weapons are to be swept aside. Furthermore, Justice Scalia wrote, "The court's opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."

But it does give me another reason to kick the ass of the next Nader voter I meet.

97.2: "Is it Congressman Polymath's position that landlords should be killed or that Captain Sterling should be fragged? Why does Congressman Polymath hate the military-industrial-landlord complex?" No question. Angry black Marxists might even trump Sybil deuteronomizing herself.

91: Doesn't "accidental gun death rate" imply that most of the people being killed would be gun owners or those close to them? It's not clear to me that this is a big problem: either the rate stabilizes or gun owners accident themselves out of existence.

Researchers from several of Pitt's Schools of Health Sciences examined discharge data from all acute care hospitals in the state for the two years preceding and the two years following repeal. They found a 32 percent increase in head injury deaths, and a 42 percent increase in head injury hospitalizations. The non-head-injury death rate did not change. [...] Total acute care hospital charges stemming from motorcycle-related head injuries rose 132 percent.

Of course, kids still have to wear motorcycle helmets, plus most cyclists ride solo. Little Johnny won't accidentally go ride Dad's cycle out on the highway without a helmet and get smeared.

Anyway, I'd be perfectly happy not to have a gun control discussion except in a dedicated thread. Instead, let's make fun of Tripp for not knowing the title "Aqualung."

People overestimate the risks. Unless you've done some of target shooting, it's hard to blow away your best friend from across the room in a drunken rage. Usually you just hit the wall. You can't shoot straight. and you're drunk into the bargain. Some say you get better results by aiming at the wall right over your best friend's head, because you'll miss that too, so you might have a chance of bagging the guy.

112: I refuse to be smeared by this witchhunt, especially when my interlocutor neglects the later intelligence findings of "Bush and Saddam... together in bed, giving H-E-A-D head". Which I assume is a codeword for illicitly exchanging nuclear secrets.

Well Geez John. I don't mind people shooting off bottle rockets on their farms either but when the stupid kid behind me shot a bottle rocket that landed on my roof near the cedar siding I threatened to call the cops if he did it again.

So, like, population density might have a little something to do with what is allowed, don't you think?

They had a hostage standoff 30 miles away from Wobegon a couple days ago. In the TV coverage, two of the SWAT team members were women. The hostage-taker was blown away by three snipers, and for all I know one or more of them were women. See, laydeez, we're liberated here in Wobegon.

The town was Little Falls, Charles Lindbergh's home town.

Little Known Fact: Minnesota east of the Mississippi was part of the original territory of the US, in the Northwest Territory.

Eh, I believe that most gun laws are a foolish waste of time. Spend the time and effort on better mental health care and screening. Lets have fewer men coming back from battle with PTSD.

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now
Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now
You gotta love one another

Minnesota has a pretty low murder rate and crime rate. North Dakota has about the lowest in the country. Gun ownership is very high in both states. There are just a lot of other variables.

I support gun control in the sense that, if a jurisdiction has a crime problem and believes that it would be helpful to restrict gun use, they should be able to do it. But people speak as though gun ownership in itself is a cause of crime, and it really isn't.

If simply "too left-wing for David Broder" counts, I'm out at #17, "Wake Me Up When September Ends." If a frightening-sounding title and touchy subject is enough, "One More Murder" by Better Than Ezra was #37. The first really unambiguous one I found was #41: "Adrenaline," by the Phunk Junkeez.

If something really embarrassing would be enough to count as automatically disqualifying, I passed an Abba tune in the low teens.

All you momzers have your iPods at hand or iTunes running at work, I see. I'll give my official answer tonight.

I can't speak for everyone else, but personally, I didn't have the earphones in my ears, I just read the names of the songs off the screen.

She did. But JE is right, there is something fucked up about US and guns, but it isn't as simple as ownership statistics. Canada does much better that way. Otoh, given that it's known to be a problem, having legislative constraints doesn't seem crazy.

Yes, Brock, I know. That's why I also support a ban on those Japanese restaurants where the cooks cook at your table and throw knives around. I'm heartsick every time I hear about another sliced ear or deep knee wound.

Also, I gotta admit that I'm with Sir Kraab on this. Guns are probably the single issue where I have the most hardcore DFH views, since I really see virtually no benefit to them relative to the numerous problems of accidental harm. I would definitely support restricting guns to hunting rifles and shotguns alone.

I am among the people here who would actively work for really tight restriction on car ownership, if it were at all politically feasible. Instead I just settle for fighting the things we do to subsidize car ownership.

171.3: Grass lawns are in no danger of killing anyone, which is pretty close to what I'd require to consider bans reasonable. However, I'd certainly say the damage they do suggests that policies and pricing to discourage grass lawns in places where they can't sustainably grow on their own would be in order... But you already knew that.

175.2: That would be true, if guns were incredibly unlikely to harm anyone but the owner.

176: Dependence on cars is will turn the rural area I'm staying in right now into a near ghost town in five years. The rich second-home types and the college students will be able to pay for the amount of driving required. Everyone else is going to have to move to a higher density area.

I use it, but itunes is pissing me off more and more lately. Tom Waits, "Pasties and a G-String" came up in the first 10 or so, but I doubt that Tom Waits could possibly disqualify me, even with the song title. Eventually I got to a song by Chingo Bling off "4 President", which album would surely do so considered in its entirety. Mentally, the songs I thought of that would disqualify me were The Frogs, "Raped", and Ween, "Mr. Richard Smoker".

Also, Norbizness, how are you just 35? We had a conversation (about a murderer classmate, J0hn Dr3w) a few years ago in which we determined we went to high school together, but I thought you graduated in 89. Were you 16?

I don't have an appropriate device to shuffle, nor is most of my music collection ripped, but I got a feeling that the most disqualifying songs would come off of Anal Cunt's album 40 More Reasons to Hate Us.

I'd certainly say the damage they do suggests that policies and pricing to discourage grass lawns in places where they can't sustainably grow on their own would be in order... But you already knew that.

I certainly didn't know that, but it's good to know there's another lawn-hater here. Woo, Po-Mo! Down with the grass!*